Its still luck of the draw who would of thought Real, Bayern and PSG would struggle so much. I dont think many had Brugge beating Atalanta especailyy after Atalanta gave us a lesson in the Europa last year. We could of thrown a few games and got Real in the play offs like City did. In theroy there format makes sense but foorball is unpredictable.
With the fixtures we had, we didn't need to throw any games. Not going full strength, full games would have seen us still win most. (Always 20/20 vision with hindsight.) You say it makes sense, I'm not so sure
We could now go out to a team that would have been out already in the old format Real Madrid and City should also have been out before they played each other.
It's just like the US sports regular season and playoffs. Difference being you actually win something for coming top of the league although it seems to be considered a lesser trophy and nobody goes nuts about it but it's something. Then the playoffs (knockout) begins and it gets serious. Put some financial incentives in for winning the league at least would make sense.
of course its luck of the draw. in gneral and over time it will be better to finish top than 8th and general far better to be top 8 than 24th. we can't look at one case where LFC end up playing PSG beacuse PSG were terrible but LFc were good. Look at the last 16 in the round PSG play LFC - 15th v 1st - not the best draw but PSG didnt do will Benfica v barca - 16th v 2nd - Again not the best draw but benfica didn't do well PSV V arsenal - 14th plays 3rd. Again seeding clearly works. feynoord v inter. 19th v 4th. Seeded team have easy tie. Real V atletico - 11th plays 5th. Again as intended. Real are a little lower than expected but scary tie Bayern v Leverkusen - 12th plays 6th. again team as lower seed gets harder tie. in this case its an odd one and rough on the seed but down to poor bayern show Dortmund v LOSC - 10th v 7th. We have a shock team in 7th but again the tie is as intened low seed playing harder game Brugge V Villa. 24th plays 8th. Just cos they happened to have a random game in the league phase is irrelvant. Villa shoudl win that so seeding is clear In another year Real, PSG, Bayern might all be up that tbale and lower ranked teams will be in those positions. I see 4 quaity CL ties in that set of 8 and another 3 that should be easy wins for the higher ranked side. 1 only see the one game (dortmund v losc) thats going to be an easy reverse of the seeding. PSV V LFC Benfica V Barca Real V atletico Bayern v Leverkusen quality ties Villa Arsenal Inter should all win easy. Dortmund should reverse the seeding. TBH all we have really done here is adds 2 extra games, mixed up the group phase and gave all the smaller teams a chance to win. The CL however will only still get competitive at the QF stage as normal. I think the Semis will be LFC v real (if we are lucky enough to be there and not villa) and Barca v leverkusen.
Finishing to means you 100% dont get anyone that finished 9th-14th I think it was. So no chance of getting someone that just missed out on autos. PSG were **** at start hence they finished so low.
Dortmund are terrible at the moment. Their win in the first leg was about their only win in 2025. They'll need to find some form from somewhere.
Everton 2-0 up on Utd. With all the whining Amorim does and the fact they are simply not improving, his managerial reign may be shorter lived than expected,
Some teams exceeded expectations and some did whatever the opposite of that is, hence how the 16 round panned out. I get that. For it's inaugural season, the new format seems overly complicated and depending on how it goes from here ie. which teams drop out, UEFA could have shot themselves in the foot in terms of viewing figures and general interest. Whatever we think about the 'lesser' teams doing well and it is great to see, Real putting city out so soon, will lose them lots of interest. I'm actually quite pleased about it but if interest declines, then they will mess about with the format again and come up with something even more convoluted.
City are not a big European name. You've got to think that the majority of football fans are quite myopic in there view. There own team and league is what they follow, everything else is background noise. Madrid and barca are the big big names, followed by bayern, man united, juve, the Milans, psg etc City havnt done enough to for long enough to be up there.
